Drawing a GPS tour

Look for the tour starting point.The best thing to do is select the starting point of a tour at a distinctive location, like a church or a market square. This will guarantee that the starting point is easy to find even for people who are unfamiliar with the location.

Delete all of the data on your GPS device (see Preparations). It is important that at least the Active Log is deleted on Garmin devices. If you have other track information in the device, save them beforehand and delete them from the Active Log. The drawing you do later should only take place in the Active Log because saving the drawing will reduce its precision.

Activate the track drawing. Before the GPS device can draw the tour, the drawing mode has to be activated. Depending on the device, there is a setting to activate (turn on) the drawing mode. (It is usually in the Track menu under Setup.)To verify: As soon as the drawing mode is activated and you move, the map view will display a line to represent the ground you have covered. If no line appears when you move, the drawing mode is not activated.

Set trail points. You can set trail points for interesting sights, for example. How to activate the trail point menu is described in the manual for your GPS device.

Important: Be sure to mark difficult intersections or forks in the trail! For intersections where it is not immediately clear what direction to continue, you should definitely set a trail point there and briefly describe how people should proceed (L for left, R for right, etc.). This is especially important at forks in a trail that are on mountainsides, for example. One trail goes up the mountainside and one goes down. From above, however, the two trails appear to be almost on the same line. Without a specific marking (L or R), it will not be immediately clear which way to go.

At the end of the tour?Now you can deactivate the drawing mode. The saved tour is now (at least for Garmin devices) in the Active Log. At this point it is a good idea to save the track in your device.